The only way to deny ISIS control of any territory is an invasion and occupation by a coalition of outside powers.
.. Unfortunately, these gains did not last, because the Shia-dominated government in Baghdad did not reach political accommodation with the Sunnis of the Awakening movement. Many Iraqi Sunni Arabs, fearing persecution from a sectarian Iraqi government, accepted ISIS as the less bad alternative.
.. To prevent something similar from happening, NATO should aim to create semiautonomous regions controlled by Sunni tribal leaders under restored Syrian and Iraqi sovereignty, using Iraqi Kurdistan as a model.
.. Though difficult, this plan could succeed because, in addition to weakening ISIS, all parties get something they want.
- Vienna conference participants would increase the chances of a diplomatic solution to the Syrian civil war, since ISIS is the largest potential spoiler.
- The EU, Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan would all get relief from the flood of refugees, as civilians would no longer need to flee ISIS, and some could even return home to stabilized areas of Iraq and Syria.
- Russia would retain its military bases and influence in Syria.
- Iran would ensure the survival of the Syrian and Iraqi governments.
- The Kurds would maintain their autonomy, perhaps with slightly expanded territorial control.
- Iraqi Sunni Arabs would get some autonomy from the central government in Baghdad.
- The Shia-dominated Iraqi government would regain sovereignty over all of Iraq.
- Finally, the United States and France would ensure a multilateral, legally recognized campaign to eliminate ISIS, rather than the half measures both have pursued thus far.
The Moral Failure of Computer Scientists
In the 1950s, a group of scientists spoke out against the dangers of nuclear weapons. Should cryptographers take on the surveillance state?
.. I spoke to Rogaway about why cryptographers fail to see their work in moral terms, and the emerging link between encryption and terrorism in the national conversation. A transcript of our conversation appears below, lightly edited for concision and clarity.
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Kaveh Waddell: Why should we think of computer science as political—and why have many considered it to be apolitical, for so long?
Phillip Rogaway: I think that science and technology are inherently political, and whether we want to think about it that way or not, it’s the nature of the beast. Our training as scientists and engineers tends to deemphasize the social positioning of what we do, and most of us scientists don’t give a whole lot of thought to how our work impacts society. But it obviously does.
.. There is a tradition, especially in physics, of activism. But computer scientists have not tended to be active in the political sphere.
.. Rogaway: My sense is that politics is there, whether one acknowledges it or not. When you have an ostensibly apolitical department, but you scratch beneath the covers and discover that three-quarters of the faculty are funded by the Department of Defense, well, in fact that’s not apolitical. That is very much working in support of a particular ethos, and one simply hasn’t called it forth.
.. Rogaway: In principle, the tenure process should free academics who have already been tenured to venture out and question matters in a way that could offend power. In practice, it doesn’t seem relevant. By the time a faculty member is tenured, it’s likely that his or her way of seeing the world will have already been so set that they’re very unlikely to become political at that point if they haven’t been already.
.. Anyone who really wants to encrypt their communication is going to find a method for doing so, whether it’s bundled with mass-market products or not. When you make encryption harder to get for ordinary people, you don’t deny it to terrorists. You just make the population as a whole insecure in their daily communications.
.. These aren’t somehow the dark times for either law enforcement or intelligence. These are the times of extraordinary information. Nowhere in history has it been so easy to learn so much about everybody. So, in some sense, we’re really talking about protecting the smallest remnants of remaining privacy.
.. Fortunately, criminal behavior has never been such a drag on society that it’s foreclosed entire areas of technological advance.
.. Rogaway: I think that when you’re hiring faculty members at a public university, that it’s fair game to ask them what their social views are, their views of social responsibility of scientists. I think you have to be careful in how you do this that you’re not applying some kind of political test, that the candidates’ political opinions match up with your own.
But part of the purpose of the public university, land-grant universities like my own, is to serve the public welfare. And if a faculty candidate doesn’t believe that that’s a part of the purpose of his or her work at all, then I think that that’s not appropriate.
.. Rogaway: It’s perfectly practical, in the sense that you can be a successful faculty member without accepting DoD funding. You won’t have as many students, you won’t be able to support as large a research group. And in some areas of computer science, and I’m sure in some areas more broadly, the vast majority of funding may be from the DoD.
I remember speaking to a computer architect, asking if there was any person in computer architecture he was aware of that wouldn’t take DoD money, and he said there was not. And he didn’t really believe that such a person could exist and be successful in the field, as there is no access to adequate resources just from the [National Science Foundation], say.
In my own area, cryptography, I think one can do fine living just on NSF money. But you won’t have a group of 10 students, or something.
Lessons of the Past Hint at Hurdles in Fight to Stop ISIS
In 2006, Israel, wielding the region’s most powerful military and solid American support, leveled whole city blocks and village centers along with Hezbollah bunkers and offices. But Hezbollah remained standing, and soon it accumulated more political and military power than ever.
.. The region, and indeed the world, is littered with evidence that in asymmetrical conflicts, even the most powerful military responses can end up stoking the violence and opposition they seek to quell, especially without solutions to underlying conflicts.
If overwhelming firepower alone could guarantee success, the United States would have won the Vietnam War and emerged victorious from Afghanistan and Iraq. And 14 years after 9/11, the threat from Al Qaeda might have disappeared, rather than persisting, morphing and re-emerging as the Islamic State.
.. Mr. Bacevich says “the lessons of these failures” are too rapidly forgotten as many Americans succumb to what he calls a form of militarism, “clinging to the illusion that because we have a splendid military, putting it to work will make things come out all right in the end.”
.. With the group claiming to defend Sunnis, even though they make up the majority of its victims, the campaigns by predominantly Christian and Shiite powers “may strengthen ISIS rather than the contrary,” said Imad Salamey, an associate professor of political science at the Lebanese American University in Beirut.
.. Militarily denying territory to the Islamic State — deflating its claims to build a so-called caliphate — is a precondition for progress against it, he said.
But real inroads against the group, Professor Salamey said, will require a comprehensive political solution with “a satisfactory regional Sunni share of power.”
That, he said, would allay the insecurity among both Sunni leaders and populations, which have festered with the deposing of Saddam Hussein and the rise of a Shiite-dominated Iran, and with the crushing of popular uprisings in Sunni-majority countries.
As It Fights ISIS, Pentagon Seeks String of Bases Overseas
The plan has met with some resistance from State Department officials concerned about a more permanent military presence across Africa and the Middle East, according to American officials familiar with the discussion. Career diplomats have long warned about the creeping militarization of American foreign policy as the Pentagon has forged new relationships with foreign governments eager for military aid.
.. Pentagon planners do not see the new approach as particularly costly by military standards. One official estimated it could be in the “low millions of dollars,” mainly to pay for military personnel, equipment and some base improvements.
.. The military already has much of the basing in place to carry out an expansion. Over the past dozen years, the Pentagon has turned what was once a decrepit French Foreign Legion base in Djibouti, in the Horn of Africa, into a sprawling headquarters housing 2,000 American troops for military operations in East Africa and Yemen.